Claude's Confession and Other Early Novels of Émile Zola. Эмиль Золя

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      CHAPTER IX

      Table of Contents

      SINCE the night when he made her cry, Daniel only lived for Jeanne. She, on her part, felt that he was very different from those who were usually about her; but to tell the truth, he repelled her more than he attracted her. This serious, sad-looking young man, who was strangely ugly, almost terrified her. But she knew that he was there in the house, and that he followed her every movement with the greatest interest.

      When she went out in the carriage, although she had vowed she would never do so, she raised her eyes and saw him at the window. This look, however, spoiled all her drive. She wondered what grudge he could have against her. She began to cross-examine herself, fearing she had committed some error.

      Daniel, on his side, understood that the battle had begun, and he played his dumb part of preceptor more or less well, longing all the time to throw himself down on his knees before the young girl and beg her forgiveness for the severity he seemed to be practising. He guessed he was displeasing her, and he feared making her thoroughly angry with him. And, indeed, when he saw her looking so beautiful, he felt seized with the most tender affection, and it seemed a crime to disturb her in her happiness.

      But his duty spoke with inexorable voice. He had sworn to watch over Jeanne’s happiness, and this feverish worldliness which had taken possession of the young girl could only be a little voluptuousness, which would leave her afterwards repentant and cast down. He wished to withdraw her from these empty pleasures, and to try to do this he was constantly obliged to wound her in her gaieties and in her pride.

      So he became a sort of nightmare to Jeanne and Madame Tellier. He dressed himself completely in black. He was always on the spot, putting himself like a barrier between these women and the unworthy life they were leading. He managed his time so that he could follow them wherever they went, to protest, by his presence, against the frivolity of their amusements.

      Nothing was more extraordinary than to see this curious young man taking a walk among the fashionable world of Paris. He had been nicknamed “The Black Knight,” and truly he could have had many love affairs if he had chosen.

      One day Jeanne was to do the quête in a church. Daniel, who had already saved some money, placed himself where the quêteuse must pass.

      The young girl was advancing with a pleasant smile, thinking much more of the elegance of her toilette than of the misery of the poor. She was there, as if in a drawing room, with a half-mocking, half-smiling look on her face; at last she came in front of Daniel.

      “For the poor, if you please,” she said, without looking at him.

      The large amount of his offering made her raise her head, and when she recognised the young man she began to blush, without knowing why. She continued her quête, but there were tears in her eyes.

      On another occasion she was present at a theatre at the representation of a rather risky piece, and she was laughing at, without, however, understanding, the actor’s dangerous jokes. As she turned round she noticed Daniel, who seemed to be looking at her reproachfully. This look went to her heart; she feared at once she was doing wrong since the Black Knight was angry. She laughed no more, and during the entr’acte, she went and hid herself at the back of the box.

      But what struck her most was Daniel’s intervention in an unpleasant experience she and her aunt had one day. Madame Tellier had formerly, when alone, met with an insult, and this deplorable adventure was repeated on this particular occasion. Two young men, doubtless very much elevated after a superabundant lunch, met them, and thought they had to do with women of doubtful reputation, for the ladies were most showily dressed, and seemed to them to promise an easy conquest. One young man even pretended that he knew them.

      “Hullo! Pomponette!” he exclaimed, addressing Jeanne. And as the young girl stared at him, terrified and speechless: “Are you going to do the proud?” he went on. But he suddenly felt himself seized by the arm. Daniel held him in a close grasp.

      “Monsieur,” said he, “you have made a mistake.... Be quick and make your excuses to these ladies.” He pointed to them, and dragged him to the carriage door. The young man stammered, and the only excuse he made was to say:

      “Pardon, but if respectable women are dressed like women that are the reverse, how do you expect people to distinguish between them?”

      Daniel allowed him to depart, and he entered the carriage of Madame Tellier at her request. The coachman was told to return to the rue d’Amsterdam. He drove off, giggling and cracking his whip.

      The carriage was crossing the place de la Concorde when Daniel perceived a queen of the demimonde passing by, laughing immoderately. He pointed her out to Jeanne and quietly said:

      “Mademoiselle, there is Pomponette!”

      The young girl looked at the creature for whom she had just been mistaken, and she blushed when she saw that they were dressed in exactly the same style. There was the same extremity of fashion and the same reckless luxury. Directly she reached home she went up to her room to weep without being disturbed, and thus get over the wicked temper she felt against Daniel.

      But Madame Tellier henceforth hated her husband’s secretary cordially. For his action in the last adventure that had happened to them she could not help but thank him, but she was singularly irritated by the forwardness of this young man, who formed, she said, a dark blot on her establishment.

      On several occasions she had tried to have him dismissed, but the deputy clung to Daniel, for he had made himself indispensable to him. He could give full fling to his folly since he paid a brain to be intelligent for him, and he felt so thoroughly at home in his folly that he took great care not to deprive himself of that commodity. He received his wife’s complaints with condescending superiority; he sent her off to her furbelows, telling her that as he was tolerant to her toilettes, she, for her part, ought to tolerate his secretary. So long as he had been the mere tradesman he had shown himself tractable enough, but since he had become a deputy he had taken the attitude of a master, and intended to rule all around him.

      Daniel was perfectly ignorant of the disturbance he caused or had caused in the household. He went blindly on, straight to his goal, as a man strong in the righteousness of his intentions. As a matter of fact, he went awkwardly to work at his task. Madame de Rionne could not have found any one with a more whole-hearted devotion and more profound affection; but she probably expected him to display more tact in the accomplishment of his painful task.

      The young man was passionately fulfilling his mission of love. His ignorance, his brusque kindheartedness should even have raised him in any one’s estimation.

      If he found himself as a stranger in the world in which circumstances compelled him to live, still he was the representative there of plighted faith, of self-sacrifice. The dead woman, with the clear foresight of the dying, had judged Daniel rightly, however. Whilst Monsieur de Rionne was consummating his own downfall, without even remembering that he had a daughter, whilst Madame Tellier selfishly wrought harm to Jeanne, Daniel, having no other tie but that of gratitude, watched over the young girl, and bitterly regretted that he could invoke no human answer to his love. He had ended by understanding that СКАЧАТЬ